I'm a professional Delphi developer who works from home. I don't really have anyone to argue with, about technical stuff, so hopefully this blog will allow me to get things off my chest.

Thursday, 19 February 2009

Twitter. I just don't get it.

..and I have really tried. Everybody seems to be twittering and everybody seems to be raving about Twitter. I just can't get excited about it. Maybe I'm getting old. I think of Twitter as the online equivalent of SMS, and since I've probably only ever sent five SMS's in my life, no wonder I don't get Twitter.

It seems like such a waste of time. More digital interference. I have enough of that with Email and RSS. Take for example Stephen Fry. Apparently the most popular Twitterer (is that even correct nomenclature?) out there. Now, I really like Stephen Fry, he's witty, funny, and all in an ultra-intelligent way, but do I really need to know when he gets stuck in a lift?

I've also tried following some of my favourite bloggers, but all I see is a whole load of inane tweets about what they're currently looking at on the web (sometimes useful, but for every decent tip, I have to wade through a whole load of rubbish), or what they're currently cooking etc etc. I guess for someone like me, who works from home, it replaces the idle chatter of the office environment. Since I always thought that was a big waste of time anyway, why should digital idle chat be any different?

While Stephen Fry was stuck in his lift, and Jeff Atwood was struggling with his servers, I was earning a living, or spending time with my daughter, or working on the house. In other words I was living in the real world. I just don't have time for Twitter, and I bet all those raving about it will realise soon enough that they don't have much time for it either.

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Ditto Facebook. I registered because Jim McKeeth organized something and invitation was over Facebook.

So I joined. Entered my university and got thousands of photos of people I could choose to be my "friends". I'd never met any of them, then I discovered there's a university with the same name in Australia!

Tried to find a way of filtering the "friends" into something manageable, but eventually decided life is too short.

Never got to joining Jim's invite.

Hard to believe some years ago colleagues would come to me to find out about "this internet thing".

Twitter is basically just a mechanism, that can be used in multiple ways. One way is to use it like the Facebook status update - telling your friends what you are doing, so that your next conversion isn't about what you do, but why you do it.

In that regard, it works a bit like a blog. If I would meet you at a conference, I wouldn't ask you where you come from, what you do and other boring questions, but I could immediately start a discussion about your blog posts.

Twitter is a micro-blogging system. It makes it possible to communication in a blog-like way, just with simpler things and more often. For instance, it wouldn't make much sense to write a real-time blog about a football game, but it would make sense to make a real-time twitter channel for a football game - just like hearing a game on the radio in the old days.

I don't "get" it either, but I started using facebook this week, and can practically "feel" the pull it has..

It's like the new way to check email once a minute (or more) to see if anything interesting is happening in the world OUTSIDE of my own. Of course it can be used to have other follow YOU, in which case you may be providing info/entertainment to other addicted followers.

As far as "getting it"... Well, that's probably not all that important. If you are willing to Twit (or whatever) on something even remotely useful, it's virtually assured that you'll find a following, audience, and fan-base that could help increase your readership and stature, regardless of the topic.

So, the BIG point is that you DON'T have to follow others... You can be the "broadcaster" (ok, "twitcaster") and HAVE followers... Just like the television.. It's one way. I know a lot of people using it in exactly this way.